Q. How can I find the earliest use of an academic concept or term?

Search for the terms using Google Ngrams (for frequency of terms in Google Books), Jstor for usage in periodicals/journals, and Gale NewsVault for usage in newspapers. Sort results by date or newest/oldest to find the earliest use in the database.

Google Ngrams gave the most results and the earliest use of the terms in this case, but it may be different with other concepts.